


One More Picture

by Jade_II



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-31
Updated: 2017-05-31
Packaged: 2018-11-07 10:22:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,738
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11056956
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jade_II/pseuds/Jade_II
Summary: The first time it happens, it’s almost an accident. Well, sort of. Well… it’s complicated.





	One More Picture

The first time it happens, it’s almost an accident. Well, sort of. Well… it’s complicated.

 

He’s in Scotland, and in between fighting Cybermen under Edinburgh Castle he’s also really, really enjoying being surrounded by all these Scots. His own accent has gone about 200% Scottish just from osmosis and he’s feeling pretty smug about that, och aye.

 

So when he hears the woman behind him speak it takes him a moment to realise that it’s the voice, not the accent this time, that’s so familiar.

 

Just a moment, though. He is him, after all.

 

He whirls, short of breath all of a sudden, to see that painfully beloved redhead pouting at her dorky husband – no, fiancé, must be at this point – as she strikes a pose in front of the castle’s impressive façade.

 

“Roryyyyy. Come on. One more picture.”

 

Out of nowhere, another woman breezes past the Doctor’s shoulder and presses her phone into Rory’s hands. “Yeah, come on, Rory.”

 

The Doctor’s breath stops altogether.

 

“Mels…” Rory sighs.

 

Mels looks at the Doctor. The Doctor looks back.

 

“Can you take the photo, mister?” she asks, already grabbing the phone back from Rory’s unresisting grasp.

 

“I, oh, yes…”

 

Her fingers brush his for a split second as she gives it to him. Then she’s dragging Rory back and draping an arm around his shoulder, pulling Amy closer on the other side. “Cheese!”

 

The Doctor takes the picture.

 

It takes him longer than it should to lower the phone, to deliver it back into Mels’ waiting hands.

 

“Cool, thanks,” she says, and with a little wave she’s walking away from him, her parents in tow.

 

The Doctor wrestles with himself for all of half a second before he pulls out his screwdriver and sends a signal to the phone to forward the photo to the TARDIS.

 

He’s almost forgotten about it when he finally returns to her the next day – those Cybermen are persistent bastards – and sets the ship in motion as soon as he reaches the console.

 

Then he looks up at the screen.

 

Rory, Mels and Amy look down on him, grinning in the sunlight, carefree and young and beautiful in front of that old, old fortress that suddenly seems so insignificant behind this minor, personal miracle.

 

“Oh,” he says, and suddenly everything aches.

 

* * *

 

The second time is… less accidental.

 

Well he’s in Berlin _anyway_ , even in the right building. – what’s a small jump forward a few years, after all?

 

Still, he hesitates in the console room for more than a moment, once he’s landed. What if he messes something up? This point in time is a true crossroads for River; any small change could send her spiralling off in a much darker, more dangerous direction. Does he dare?

 

The TARDIS, curiously, says nothing.

 

And in the end, of course, the temptation is too great.

 

His hands shake as he picks up the camera and opens the door, stepping out into an empty corridor. He knows exactly which way to go, having walked this precise path a few years in the past just a few minutes ago.

 

And he hears himself before he sees anything, anyway.

 

His younger self, so smug, so _pleased_.

 

Abruptly, the Doctor realises that if he wants to see her at all, it will need to be now, before she goes and jumps out of the window like the wonderful crazy woman that she was.

 

Is. Right now, she _is._

 

Carefully, he peers around the doorway just in time to witness the kiss. It’s an awful kiss, that. His younger self fascinated and frustrated at the same time, and River… not quite River, yet. He remembers how he felt when he realised that was their first kiss from her point of view, and the lengths he went to to make sure the second time was better – moonlight and music and dressing up to the nines. That was something he got right, at least.

 

It hurts his hearts all over again to hear her mocking him, now that he knows exactly what’s going on.

 

But he needs to catch her, before she goes.

 

He raises the camera.

 

“Kiss kiss,” says River.

 

The TARDIS hums at him when he comes back, and he connects the camera to the console.

 

“Here, old girl. Look. Look at her, so young. So fragile.”

 

But he feels worse now than he did before, and he vows not to do this again. It’s not worth it.

 

* * *

 

The Doctor breaks his vow in a heartbeat, after stumbling onto the Byzantium – literally – and almost straight into her arms.

 

The TARDIS lands in a nondescript corridor, but he recognises it straight away. How could he not, after spending hours climbing out of this ship with her and Amy and trying to look anywhere but at her hypnotically enticing figure?

 

Besides, the nearest door leads to the ballroom, and he looks inside and spots her instantly. He has never forgotten even one single detail of that outfit – the dress, the shoes, the hair – and there she is, swinging across the dancefloor with some boring middle-aged fellow who can’t possibly appreciate the sweeping, deadly elegance of her every move.

 

He nips back inside for his camera, and wastes precious minutes framing the perfect shot before he gets on with the heroics he’s really here for… out of her sight.

 

This one, he keeps by his bed. He doesn’t avoid sleeping there quite so much after that.

 

* * *

 

The Frost Fair, is so, so difficult until he gets the chance to run away from Bill for just a moment to chase the strains of Stevie Wonder coming from upriver.

 

When he told Bill he’d been here a few times he wasn’t lying. He just didn’t tell her that every single one of those times was to do what he’s doing now. Every single time, all he wanted to do was see River’s face when Stevie Wonder sings for her under a bridge in 1814.

 

And this time, he has his camera with him.

 

He has to dodge a couple of his past selves on his quest for the best possible angle, and he almost misses it – that perfect moment when her eyes widen and her mouth opens with delight and she grasps his young self’s arm too tightly in her excitement – almost, but not quite.

 

This is what he has come here to see, every time he’s really, really needed that infusion of second-hand joy into his existence. Strange that he’s never thought of documenting it like this before.

 

This picture is going in his pocket, he knows already, to nestle between his screwdriver and his psychic paper and to be more important than either of them.

 

There’s some kind of monster under the Thames but, he thinks, that’s not actually why the TARDIS brought him here.

 

He pockets the camera more carefully than he would the rarest jewel.

 

* * *

 

He’s criss-crossed mercilessly over his own timeline and there are hundreds of photographs in his possession before he finally decides that yes, he does need to go back to Darillium.

 

It still hurts to contemplate it, but if he doesn’t complete his collection that will, he thinks, hurt more. Because those 24 years, for all that they ended with his hearts in a million pieces, were the best years of their marriage by far. He can’t ignore them. He needs them to be at least as almost-tangible as his photography habit has made the rest. One more picture, he tells himself, that’s all he needs.

 

He sneaks up on her on the restaurant balcony while his younger self goes off to investigate Nardole and Ramone and their robot body – and why didn’t he wonder at the time that River just stayed put here, anyway? – and raises the camera.

 

She whirls, and suddenly she’s looking right at him and halfway to pulling her gun from its hidden holster.

 

In retrospect, he’s surprised he ever managed to sneak up on her at all, let alone a hundred times.

 

“Oh,” she says, relaxing. “It’s you. I thought you went…”

 

“…That way, yes, I did,” he confirms. “But I had to come back.”

 

“Missing me already?” she teases, smoothing her dress back into place over her concealed weapon.

 

He swallows. “Something like that.”               

 

Her eyebrows twitch, and he knows he has to watch out – any tiny misstep and she’s going to figure out that he’s not the him she thinks he is.

 

“Brought my camera,” he half-explains, lifting it in case she hasn’t noticed.

 

Who is he kidding? Of course she’s noticed.

 

“So I see.”

 

He clears his throat. River narrows her eyes.

 

Then she takes pity on him.

 

“Oh, give it here,” she says, snatching it away from him and draping an arm around his shoulder before he quite realises what’s going on. “Say cheese, sweetie.”

 

“Cheese, sweetie,” he mumbles, as she presses a kiss to his cheek and clicks the shutter.

 

River nods judiciously, and presses the camera back into his hands. “Send me a copy.”

 

“Send…?” Her touch has reduced him to monosyllables. Nothing new there, then.

 

She steps back, looking him up and down, and there’s something in the way she crinkles her eyes and he knows that she _knows_.

 

“You look alright,” she decides, nodding briskly. “Good.” She looks up and meets his eyes, and he wonders if the fountain of pain in his hearts shows in his gaze like hers does.

 

His is probably worse.

 

Footsteps sound around the corner and her breath catches at the same moment as his does, their final moment, his actual, final moment with her.

 

River, bless her, kisses him.

 

They hold on for longer than is probably wise, but then, they’ve never kissed wisely. How dull would that be, eh?

 

And then there are no words that seem adequate, so he hugs her close and she squeezes his hands and they part at a run.

 

Oddly, sitting immobile in the TARDIS afterwards, he doesn’t chastise himself for taking that risk, or even for putting his hearts through the wringer again. This time, his hearts feel a bit better for being wrung.

 

He does send her a copy of the picture.

 

He finds it, much later, in her diary, with _idiot xx_ written across the back in her familiar hand. He can see the fond eye-roll in that one word.

 

It makes him smile, and he folds it back between the pages.


End file.
